Vimzor said...
I was asking because last time I took clarithromycin (+ minocycline) it seemed to not work anymore. And I remember a topic here somewhere about bartonella and how you can only start / stop antibiotics a couple times before bartonella becomes resistant. Not sure if I can find it again, was a long time ago.
there are numerous reasons why one might experience that
for instance common bacteriostatic abx might easily target the accessible bacteria - leaving those in biofilms or tissues more or less unscathed - so when abx are started again - less herx.
but that doesn't mean the bacteria have developed resistance
actual bacterial resistance is actually a rare event - take a look at the history of the most famous resistant bacteria MRSA
Penicillin revolutionised the treatment of Staphylococcal infections. But its power over them began to wane soon after its general introduction. The first naturally occurring Penicillin-resistant Staphylococci were noted by Fleming in 1942. Between April and November 1946, 12.5 per cent of Staphylococcus aureus strains isolated at the Hammersmith Hospital in London were Penicillin-resistant. By early 1947 the percentage had tripled. The bacteriologist Mary Barber showed that this rise was not due to the development of resistance while patients were being treated, but due to the spread of a Penicillin-resistant strain in the hospital. http://mrsaactionuk.net/pottedhistorymrsa.html#so these are rare genetic mutations that occur in one place very very occasionally - and then spread to other places by cross contamination etc - rather than something that pops up in one patient after another spontaneously
it is also almost unheard of when 2 or more antibiotics are given at the same time ( even in the forced resistance type lab experiments where they optimise the conditions for resistance to form ) - for thsi to happen there would have to be 2 separate highly specific and rare mutations happening in the same organism at the same time.
so it doesn't happen in patients after a few rounds of abx -
think about
it for a minute - LLMD's would be chopping and changing ABX every couple of weeks - whereas in fact they tend to keep the same protocols for many months and still get people well.
take also the paper highlighted by Rainy the other day - here they only changed the abx to target different infections - they kept the same abx for the bartonella patients throughout and just did more rounds and got most of them well again - and these people were bedbound or wheelchair bound
on top of all that - slow growing infections like bartonella have longer cycle times vs things like staph and are generally slower to form resistance as a result
in general - i would be wary of anecdotal reports -i.e. where one person once said X or Y.
they can be useful for ideas to research further - but rarely as evidence as such in themselves
there are still lots of myths and misinformation floating around about
lyme and co.
often repeated by very well meaning people
as one of our longstanding members light-heartedly remarked - there are also anecdotal reports of people seeing Elvis